1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to heat sinks. In particular, the present invention relates to heat sinks for mobile implementations, such as vehicles.
2. Description of Related Art
Equipment in vehicles, such as airborne vehicles, land-based vehicles, space-based vehicles, and other such mobile equipment often generate heat that must be dissipated or rejected. For example, heat produced by an automobile engine is rejected via coolant flowing through the automobile's radiator. In low-speed aircraft, heat is often rejected via the aircraft's skin to the air flowing over the skin. In other implementations, however, rejecting heat is more difficult. For example, air impacting onto a high-speed aircraft often imparts heat into the aircraft's skin due to friction, instead of removing heat from the skin. If rejecting heat from such equipment is difficult or impossible, the equipment will continue to undesirably increase in temperature so long as heat is being generated within the equipment.
One conventional way of rejecting heat produced by equipment in vehicles is to transfer the heat into fuel used to power the equipment. When the fuel is burned, the rejected heat leaves the equipment. Problems, however, exist with such implementations. Firstly, if sufficient heat is rejected into the fuel, the temperature of the fuel may increase to the point where the fuel thermally breaks down. This situation can cause buildups of deposits within the equipment's fuel system, resulting in reduced equipment performance and/or undesired behavior. Secondly, the fuel may come into contact with components, such as gaskets and electronics, of the equipment that have limited tolerance to high temperatures.
There are many ways of rejecting heat from mobile equipment and the like well known in the art, however, considerable shortcomings remain.
While the invention is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are herein described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the description herein of specific embodiments is not intended to limit the invention to the particular forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.